Metal Door Jams and Laminate

bobzemuda

My home was built in the late fifties and has metal door jams throughout. While we do have wood floors, they are severely damaged, and the previous owner had glued some flooring to them. As much as we'd like to attempt to refinish them, we are not in a position to remove everything from our home to attempt to refinish them all at once because we are expecting our first child. Refinishing one room at a time seems as though we'll end up with strange transitions room to room. Plus, we have large dogs that destroyed the cheap wood flooring in our previous home, and this flooring doesn't look any sturdier.

Because of this, and our want to get our house to a salable state as soon as possible, we are thinking of laying the cheap, home depot house brand of laminate or something similar over the existing wood floor.

My question is that while I know you should cut the door jams with them being metal I do not see this going well with any tools I currently own. What is the recommendation in an instance like this. A picture of the jam is below.

rcuerrier

This is a tricky and dangerous task. Some might suggest you use a grinder to cut the door jam in order to get the laminate under it but that can be really dangerous as it poses a fire hazard in older homes because of the sparks that are created.

We've had some success using a multi-master but it doesn't always work.

In some instance we've had to cut the "trim" part of the casing and cut the laminate tight to the inside of the jam. Of course this isn't the best solution because there is no expansion gap and it doesn't always look clean.

Good luck, and be careful!

tpolk

carpet

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rcuerrier